Incestuous honours system rewards its own

The honours system holds endless fascination for both its critics and its supporters, with much of this attraction being down to the mysterious processes that lie behind it.

I believe that a system of public honours has an important role to play but what often appals me are the hidden agendas behind its operation.

The most recent Queen's Birthday Honours List had some sharp reminders of its current shortcomings.

These do not centre around the concerns that hit the headlines when MPs recently quizzed a few former prime ministers about how the honours system works and how certain high-profile individuals came to be honoured, or not as the case may be. It is not even a concern about the relevance of some of the titles, although substituting 'Excellence' for 'Empire' does seem to make a lot of sense in this post-colonial age.

The concern not adequately dealt with by MPs is how certain industries and certain jobs attract honours and others do not. We all know that senior civil servants get gongs just for doing their jobs and, if this is stopped, it would do a lot to help restore the credibility of the honours system, but what about other sectors?

Ten or 20 years ago the insurance industry attracted a regular trickle of honours, but never a flood like some industries. Some jobs, such as chairman of Lloyd's, used to come with an an automatic knighthood.

That trickle has now dried up completely. Suddenly we see regulators like Carol Sergeant, former managing director of the Financial Services Authority, popping up on the honours list along with some of her colleagues from Canary Wharf. Why? Who changed the policy to say that the regulators are more worthy than the regulated? Has anyone at the FSA really done anything exceptional to deserve inclusion, apart from Howard Davis who already has a knighthood?

Before meddling with the names of the awards, MPs ought to ensure there is proper transparency about the criteria and the processes behind the honours system. And somebody had better explain why the insurance industry is now deemed of so little importance among the civil servants who draw up the bulk of the proposals before awarding themselves a few gongs for doing it.